180 gallon Reef build.

First topic message reminder :

there seems to be some interest here about Reef Aquariums
so I thought I would start a thread on one of our builds to help others get an idea
of whats involved. this is a 180 gallon reef ready tank with dual corner overflows and a homemade 75 gallon sump/fuge.
in the beginning I started collecting things that I would need to make this happen some things I purchased new while others I bought used like this Euro Reef skimmer for 25 dollars which is in use today and works wonderful without dropping 800.00+ on a new one. I also use diesel bags to filter as well.

here it is in use as you can see it works very well.

here is a 130 lbs of live rock that I also purchased used for 100.00 which saved me alot of $$ over retail however I did test it for copper before using it in the tank.
you can test it my using a cheapo HOB filter with poly pad inserts if the pads turn blue the rock has been exposed to copper.

ok on to the build I think I will start with the sump/fuge it is a 75 gallon tank that I made compartments with thick plexi glass that will withstand the flow passing through the sump and 100% silicone to secure them to the sides. on the left side of the sump is where the skimmer sits it skims the water as it passes down from the DT into the sump and on the right is the pump that pumps the clean water back into the DT in the center is the fuge where I keep Cheato and more live rock this not only adds greater water volume but also the macro algae is great for nurient export and if I have a trouble making fish I can throw him in the fuge:)
theres 2x 300 watt heaters in the sump/fuge and you can see on the right that the plexi is staggered to act as a bubble trap so micro bubbles will not be an issue in the Main display

the fuge.

always use check valves to prevent floods.
here is the tank the day we got it home with some help by other reefer friends it was over 300lbs empty. we reinforced the stand with 2x4's in each corner and since this tank is going in the great room over the garage we reinforced the floor with 4x4's underneath the tank.

to be continued........

I can't wait to get my tank up and going. If this dang weather would just cooperate so I could get the salt water, LR and LS home!
I was so hoping to get that done last weekend, but it's been soooo hot! We could put the LR and LS in the back seat of the truck (the air condidioning is out though), but the 55g of water would have to ride in the bed, and I just don't know how good that water would be by the time we made the 2 hour trip back home. I worry that it may be too hot in the cab for the LR and LS as well....
*sigh*

you are probably right. its really hot here too feel like 100 with the humidity even the chicks are hot:( I really hate this time of year its as bad as being snowed in either extreme you cant be outdoors for long. come on fall!!!!

I totally agree there! I find that as I get older, I don't handle extremes of either very well. I can remember when the temps didn't phase me at all. Ah, the good ol' days...

It's so hard being patient. Geez, I'm tempted just to buy LR and LS from some place closer, and just make up my own water and cycle the whole kit and kaboodle. OR, instead of LR, what about buying clean dried rock, cycling it along with the LS in the tank, then buying frags to seed the rock? Is that even possible?

Meredith wrote:

I totally agree there! I find that as I get older, I don't handle extremes of either very well. I can remember when the temps didn't phase me at all. Ah, the good ol' days...

It's so hard being patient. Geez, I'm tempted just to buy LR and LS from some place closer, and just make up my own water and cycle the whole kit and kaboodle. OR, instead of LR, what about buying clean dried rock, cycling it along with the LS in the tank, then buying frags to seed the rock? Is that even possible?

you can get dry dead rock and live sand then pickup some seed rock later lots of people have done it that way. depending on how much LR you use will make a big difference how long it takes for your cycle to complete. ya know I was thinking if it were me in your situation I would get some of those large styrofoam coolers they use for shipping steaks like Omaha steak company uses then I would just make sure that the rock is soaked with unprinted paper towels soaked in tank water and for the LS I would make sure the sand is covered in tank water even pickup some dry ice to tape to the inside lid of the styrofoam cooler and you'd be good to go. I sold an entire tank and all its contents last weekend and these people had an hr and a half drive home with the LR,LS and all the live stock in the back of their pickup in this heat and everything did fine but I packed really well.

I didn't do exactly what you are describing but when I went from 29 to 55 gallons I added 50lbs of dry rock to my 45lbs of live rock. The live rock has already (in about two months) seeded the dry rock. It is turning purple & red and looks great. I will have to get some updated pics.

Oh and Cindy I did the peroxide soak on two of my zoa colonies on Monday. I haven't seen full extension on them but again one of them was having issues to begin with is why I did the soak.

April, if they are not melting then I would just give them time to bounce back, the frags I dipped are breaking out again with HA and I have already dipped them twice so I decided I will frag the zoa's salvage what I can and put them on clean HA free disc's. so the dip seems to only help temporarily:( so frag'em!

Oh I see....well I hope that whatever was ailing the larger colony was taken care of by the dip and it can get back to what it used to be. It is nothing fancy, just some tan/pink polyps but there are lots of 'em.

what does it look like thats ailing it? can you see any sponge? sponge really messes up Zoa's also look under the saltwater section I post symtoms and causes there and how to fix the issue,I think the title of the thread was "why are my zoa's closed" lol I have a good memory its just short:)

here it is. Lugols dip is very good.
https://usafishbox.forumotion.com/t8451-why-are-my-zoanthids-closed

Uh-Oh! Reading back through that post I saw the mixture for the peroxide is 20tbsp tank water & 2tbsp peroxide....I did 20 water & 5 peroxide. Hope that I didn't ruin them! They aren't melting, just slow to open up properly.

wildbeanerz wrote:

Uh-Oh! Reading back through that post I saw the mixture for the peroxide is 20tbsp tank water & 2tbsp peroxide....I did 20 water & 5 peroxide. Hope that I didn't ruin them! They aren't melting, just slow to open up properly.

OOpss I think the'll be ok unless they melt or jump the disc today is day 3 since you dipped them so far so good.

cwhip wrote:

you can get dry dead rock and live sand then pickup some seed rock later lots of people have done it that way. depending on how much LR you use will make a big difference how long it takes for your cycle to complete. ya know I was thinking if it were me in your situation I would get some of those large styrofoam coolers they use for shipping steaks like Omaha steak company uses then I would just make sure that the rock is soaked with unprinted paper towels soaked in tank water and for the LS I would make sure the sand is covered in tank water even pickup some dry ice to tape to the inside lid of the styrofoam cooler and you'd be good to go. I sold an entire tank and all its contents last weekend and these people had an hr and a half drive home with the LR,LS and all the live stock in the back of their pickup in this heat and everything did fine but I packed really well.

That's an EXCELLENT idea!!! I'd have never thought of that! How about the water though? Should I just go ahead and make up my own or do you think I could safely put it into those coolers too...but then there's the dry ice...don't know how I'd keep the water from coming into contact with it. I'm gonna do the cooler idea for the LR and LS tho!!!
Have I told you lately that you're just awesome???

awe Thanks Meredith:) I think the water will be fine. use new 5 gallon buckets with the lids I get mine at either Home Depot or Lowes, the dry ice packs won't work with the water so just keep the water out of direct sun light so it won't heat up too much and keep everything in the building until the last minute before you haul but home. remember youre gonna have some die off no matter what but it will be ok plus you'll be doing water changes and monitoring your amm,nitrites and nitrates for the first few weeks after setup anyway until you see 0 then you should be good to go. while your at the LFS you can also pickup some Stability to add to the tank after you have everything setup and running, this stuff is bacteria in a bottle use it as directed and it will help to stabilze the water in no time. I've used this product over the last 3 years to setup several different tanks and it has worked everytime I love it just use it as directed. here are three products that do the same thing incase your store doesn't carry stability they are Micro bacter7 by Brightwell Aquatics, Bio Spira, or Stability they all do the samething and I personally have used all three with great success. I had a major crash in my 180 last year due to a digging fish that sent most of my established sand bed up into the water column and it released toxics gasses into the tank my SPS were bleaching rapidly and I had a tank full of other corals and 21 fish including three tangs in an emergency the only thing I could do was a total break down of the tank removing over 300# of LR all the fish corals and vaccuum the black water out, I had the entire contents of my tank in bins all over my great room it took about 13hrs start to finnish I had no choice but to use mostly newly mixed saltwater to refill the tank so it had very little good bacteria in it once the tank was all back together I still had all these fish that needed to be put back in so I dumped 3 bottles of bio spira into my tank and waited until it had cycled through then I began putting the fish back after all this I didn't loose one fish and it was a heluva ordeal so I know this stuff works 1st hand otherwise I would not reccommend it. the 180 is now it top form I did lose 7 SPS but that was all now my corals are growing like weeds:) "nothing good in a Reef happens fast."

cwhip wrote:

"nothing good in a Reef happens fast."

That right there should be the quote of the week!

Again, thank you for the incredible info! I'm glad that everything turned out okay for you with minimal loss to your tank stock. I will definitely look for those!

The water is what will have to be hauled in the bed of the truck... Not sure how we're gonna manage keeping it cool back there unless it happens to be cloudy or something. Maybe a tarp over the bed...but that might hold the heat in more? UGH!

What about getting a lesser amount of the water from the LFS...say 30 gallons, then make some up here at home to make up the difference if I use one of those bacterial additives? That way, I would have a better chance of fitting the water in the back seat along with the tub(s) holding the LR?

And...another question.... how soon would you recommend adding the little snailey things to eat the cyan and diatom blooms? Do I wait till I see them start up before ordering the snails? I won't add any critters until my params are where they should be, but didn't know if I should put some in prior to the blooms?

any amount of seed water is gonna help it doesn't need to fill the entire tank.
I would wait to add cuc until the params are 0 amm ,trites,trates and you start to see Diatoms they always show up 1st then go to reef cleaners .org and get 100-150 Dwarf Ceriths then after the diatoms the cyano will start the cerith will eat that as well but you also may need to maually remove some we'll get to that when it happens. all this is normal its just the tank maturing.

Whew! Great!! :) Again, thank you!!! I'm such a nervous wreck! LOL!

Meredith wrote:

Whew! Great!! :) Again, thank you!!! I'm such a nervous wreck! LOL!

don't be nervous you'll find its not as hard as you think:)

I have a question. How do you cycle a SA tank? Do you use amm to cycle it?

I use live rock live sand and seed water and dirty Chaeto from my other tanks.

cwhip wrote:

I use live rock live sand and seed water and dirty Cheato from my other tanks.

Cheato?? What's that?

Chaeto is an excellent macro algae for refugiums it removes both phosphates and nitrates from the water in turn also out competing nuisance algaes for nutrients, its also a great place to culture copepods which are a favorite food of many fish.some fish like Mandarins will only eat copepods but now they are breeding them to except other foods like frozen brine and mysis.
Chaeto

my fuge

HOB Refugeum you can easily setup an hob fuge like this one if you do not have a Reef Ready tank with the sump/fuge area under the tank.

copepod

cwhip wrote:

here it is. Lugols dip is very good.
https://usafishbox.forumotion.com/t8451-why-are-my-zoanthids-closed

Lugols is very good. I use that to dip any corals i get before they go in. I feel bad sometimes when i see little star fish and pods start to die but i cannot take any chances and this stuff does the trick.

impressive !!!

woah sweet tank, thats gonna look great. i wanna start a salt tank.